Two years into the ARPA program, the City still lacked the basic safeguards required for responsible stewardship: no comprehensive recovery plan, no transparent project-selection framework, no consistent documentation standards, and no clear public accounting of how federal relief dollars were being used to stabilize residents or the local economy.
By 2023, what had emerged was not a coherent recovery strategy, but a governing pattern defined by repeated vehicle purchases, recurring emergency declarations, and ad hoc spending decisions made in the absence of an articulated plan—while the City’s most flexible and consequential ARPA category—revenue replacement—remained unexplained.
I. 2023 Was a Partial Shift, But Not a Strategic One
Mount Vernon’s 2023 ARPA spending reflected a slight shift in which categories dominated the ledger—but not in how decisions were made or why those priorities were chosen.
The leading spending categories in 2023 were:
- Sewer and water infrastructure: $2.8M
- Vehicles (again): $1.3M
- The Mayor’s Guaranteed Income initiative: $900K
- Equipment: $876K
Some of this spending was plainly justified. Sewer work represents necessary, long-overdue infrastructure investment tied to public health and regulatory compliance. Certain equipment purchases may also fall within allowable ARPA uses, depending on purpose and documentation.
But even where expenditures were technically permissible, strategy remained absent. There was no articulated recovery framework explaining why these categories were prioritized, how projects were selected within them, how individual investments worked together, or how outcomes would be measured. Rather than a deliberate pivot toward resident recovery or long-term stabilization, 2023 spending reflects a reallocation of ARPA dollars across eligible categories without a unifying recovery narrative.
This matters because ARPA funds were a one-time infusion, not a recurring revenue source. That made advance planning essential. Each dollar spent should have been evaluated not only for permissibility, but for whether it reduced long-term risk or increased the City’s exposure once the aid ended.
That preparation did not occur.
Instead, the City made decisions that expanded its post-ARPA obligations. It purchased vehicles and equipment that require ongoing maintenance and replacement. It began projects that will need additional funding to complete or sustain. And it hired personnel using ARPA dollars without a credible plan to pay them once federal funding expired.
At the same time, the City appears to have used its $10 million Revenue Replacement allowance not as a bridge to stability, but as a way to mask operating losses, postponing structural corrections rather than making them.
The result is the fiscal cliff that state officials warned about. When the aid ended, Mount Vernon was not better positioned to absorb the loss. Recurring costs remained. One-time money disappeared. And the structural gap that ARPA was supposed to help close was merely deferred.
That is why, approaching 2026, the City is in a weaker financial position than it was before receiving $41 million in federal relief—and why officials are now attempting to close the gap through higher property taxes, increased fees, and new charges on residents.
II. Another Year, Another Fleet Expansion
In 2023, the City added another sixteen (16) vehicles funded with ARPA dollars, for a total cost of approximately $6,557,213 – nearly 16% of the City’s entire ARPA distribution. At this point, no argument that these purchases are tied to extraordinary pandemic needs can be entertained.
They were routine. Predictable. Embedded.
This extraordinary amount was spent without any public analysis of:
- Whether these vehicles replaced aging assets or expanded fleet size
- Whether lifecycle costs were incorporated into future budgets
- Whether alternative funding sources were considered
- Or why fleet acquisition continued to crowd out other recovery priorities
ARPA, intended as emergency stabilization funding, had effectively become Mount Vernon’s capital fleet financing mechanism.
Yet at the 2026 Board of Estimate and Contract budget hearing, the Mayor cited the need for DPW vehicles as part of the justification for a nearly 8% property tax increase—despite the City’s extensive use of ARPA funds for fleet purchases from 2021 – 2025, totaling over $7 million.
III. The $82,000 Demolition — And the Questions It Raises
In 2023, the City approved $82,000 in ARPA funds to demolish a property located at 151 Union Avenue. The City has characterized the demolition as an emergency, but its own documentation undermines that claim.
According to the ordinance authorizing the demolition, the fire at 151 Union Avenue occurred in 2020, and the property was declared “unsafe and dangerous” that same year, with the owner ordered to demolish the structure at that time. Yet the City took no action for more than two years, only invoking “imminent danger” in late 2022 and funding the demolition with ARPA dollars in 2023. The only thing that changed between late 2022 and 2023 was the availability of one-time federal aid.
Complicating matters, 151 Union was owned by Condell Hamilton, Sr., an assistant minister at the church owned and run by Comptroller Darren Morten. Condell Hamilton, Sr. is the father of Condell Hamilton, Jr., the City’s Assistant Comptroller, a position created and filled in 2022 by Hamilton, Jr., who had no substantive municipal finance or accounting background. Meanwhile, the City Charter–required First Deputy Comptroller position—mandated to be filled by a qualified accountant and designated as the Comptroller’s successor—remained vacant.
Further complicating the matter, the Mayor and the Comptroller signed the $82,000 check, but there appears to be no documented:
- Conflict-of-interest disclosure or abstention
- Enhanced or independent review
- Explanation for why ARPA funds were used instead of routine code enforcement or owner-funded remediation
This is not merely an optics issue. It is a failure of financial governance.
Leaving a charter-mandated safeguard unfilled, creating parallel positions outside the charter structure, and directing one-time federal funds to demolish a tax-delinquent private property owned by the immediate family member of a senior finance employee undermine confidence in the City’s oversight at precisely the moment strong controls were most needed.
IV. A Closer Look at the Demolitions: Recovery — or Retroactive Cleanup?
The other two ARPA-funded demolitions were likewise labeled “emergencies” and involved privately owned properties. But like the Hamilton property, neither 119 South First Avenue nor 404 South First Avenue represented newly dangerous conditions triggered by the pandemic.
Both were longstanding problem properties, declared unsafe years before COVID and long before ARPA funds became available. In each case, the City already possessed established legal tools—code enforcement, liens, court action, or capital budgeting—to address the conditions.
ARPA guidance permits demolition of vacant or abandoned buildings only in narrow circumstances, typically where the action is clearly tied to pandemic recovery or paired with documented greening, reuse, or redevelopment. Yet the City’s ARPA files contain demolition invoices only, with no accompanying contracts or plans for greening, neighborhood revitalization, or future use.
To the contrary, the records reflect the City’s expectation that it will eventually recoup its costs when the properties are sold—by the same owners who allowed the buildings to become condemned and who, in some cases, owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax arrears.
Relabeling long-ignored code enforcement failures as “emergencies” years later does not establish a pandemic nexus. While a local emergency declaration may justify immediate action under the Building Code, it does not, standing alone, transform routine municipal obligations into eligible federal recovery spending.
In practical terms, these demolitions resemble not COVID response, but ARPA substituting for ordinary City responsibilities—using one-time federal funds to address years, and in some cases decades, of deferred maintenance and enforcement.
That distinction matters. ARPA was intended to help cities recover from a public health and economic shock—not to retroactively finance problems that long predated the pandemic.
V. Nearly $1 Million in Gift Cards — And No Public Record of Distribution
As explained last week, the guaranteed income program provides residents with direct, unconditional cash support to help stabilize households facing economic hardship.
In 2023, the City purchased 1,800 gift cards valued at $500 each, totaling $900,000, ostensibly for that purpose. But the ARPA records contain no evidence showing how—or whether—those funds were distributed.
Specifically, the files include:
- No publicly available distribution data
- No recipient counts
- No eligibility criteria
- No reporting confirming whether the cards were ever fully distributed
Without this documentation, the public cannot verify whether the money reached residents, how recipients were selected, or whether the program complied with federal ARPA requirements.
VI. Still No Accounting for the $10 Million Revenue Replacement
Perhaps most critically, 2023 did nothing to resolve the central unanswered question of Mount Vernon’s ARPA program: where is the $10 million Revenue Replacement allowance?
Despite being marked as fully spent in City records, 2023 records contain:
- No transaction-level detail
- No departmental allocation
- No explanation of what services were supported
- No audit trail tying expenditures to the allowance
VII. What 2023 Reveals
By 2023, it was evident that no coherent recovery strategy would emerge. Three years into the ARPA program, the City had not articulated a plan, established a transparent framework for decision-making, or demonstrated consistent, verifiable delivery of aid to the community. The absence of a strategy was no longer provisional; it was the operating condition.
As a result, vehicles continued to multiply, emergency declarations were used to justify routine spending, significant expenditures proceeded without explanation, and the City’s most flexible ARPA category—revenue replacement—remained effectively invisible.
Next:
Part 5 — 2024: The Final Years of ARPA and the Fiscal Cliff Ahead
More vehicles, more “emergencies,” more gift cards, a $600,000 demolition, and some very questionable “community development.”
And in Part 6 – 2025: Hello, Fiscal Cliff – What happens when one-time money runs out, and the City never built anything sustainable in its place.